


Catch Me If You Can

by Ultra



Series: Moments in Time [11]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Parker Being Parker (Leverage), Protective Eliot Spencer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2020-02-28 14:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18758767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: 'For the first time in the whole of her life, Parker had a safety net, and his name was Eliot Spencer.'





	Catch Me If You Can

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for rozabellalove on LiveJournal as part of a prompt meme.

Parker never feared falling, in fact she loved it. Jumping off buildings, out of windows, onto moving vehicles, it never mattered. The wind in her hair and a smile on her face was all she knew as she sailed down, ever downward, never afraid of the rush, always finding it exhilarating.

What was to be feared was not the ground either. Solid concrete never bothered Parker at all. She figured that if the harness broke forty storeys high, letting her plummet at break neck speed to the pavement below, she wasn’t going to know anything about it. The thrill of the fall would end with a crunch and all she would know was black and nothing. She comforted herself that there would be no pain, just an ending, and she would go out as she knew she should, free-falling into the unknown, the same way she did everything.

The only fear Parker had when rappelling and such was landing, and landing well, but in the grasp of the wrong person. In the old days it was the good guys, the cops or security guards, that could potentially get her and take her away, lock her up behind bars and locks that even she could not escape. Either that or the people she was stealing from who would do much worse. These days it was the bad guys, the thugs and the goons, the evil businessmen and such. If one false move sent her plummeting into their waiting hands, Parker shuddered just thinking what might become of her.

It was a small fear, of course, something minor that she rarely considered, simply because she didn’t have to. For the first time in the whole of her life, Parker had a safety net, and his name was Eliot Spencer. To the rest of the world, a hitter, retrieval specialist, a violent animal even, but to Parker he was safety, security, a reliable source of fear reduction for her alone.

Stood atop the building now, she checked the harness once, twice, three times for luck as she always did. Still, she cared not at all if the rope snapped or the hooks gave way. Peering over the ledge she saw Eliot waiting below, heard him in her ear bud as he growled about her wasting time and not getting on with the job fast enough. It didn’t bother her, only caused a giggle to rise in her throat that would make him all the more mad, and she knew it.

Nate gave the count, down from ten, but he barely got to six before Parker launched herself over the side. They were used to it by now and didn’t say a word as the thief did what she did best. She worked quickly and quietly on the window lock, slipping into the office and out again without a moments pause. Unfortunately, on climbing back out she had a problem. Ten storeys up from the ground, she just didn’t have time to reattach herself properly as the guards spotted her on her way out the window and made a beeline for her.

Parker didn’t consider it as taking her life into her own hands as she bodily flung herself out into the night. She was putting herself in Eliot’s hands, quite literally, as she plummeted towards him at a ridiculous number of miles an hour. Free-falling as she always did with a smile on her face, her expression was not at all matched by the hitter’s as he tried to brace himself for impact and didn’t quite make it.

Strong as he was Eliot was floored by the force of even Parker’s light-weight body hitting him full on. She landed on top of him, his arms around her, shielding her from the hard ground that might’ve meant the end. There was a good chance both of them had bruised some ribs and if Eliot hadn’t cracked a vertebrae it was a miracle, but it was fine, he’d live, it was what he did.

“You okay?” he checked with the woman lying atop him, still grinning like an idiot.

“Yep,” she confirmed, shivering despite the warm night.

Perhaps it was the exhilaration of the fall, maybe it was the way Eliot’s hands were moving over her body right now, presumably checking for breakage though somehow it felt a lot different right now.

“You, uh... you wanna move?” he asked her then, not entirely sure why he wanted her to in that moment when his eyes met hers, shiny and bright even in the dark.

“Y’know you’re the only person who ever made me wanna be a lousy thief,” she told him, with laughter in her voice, not least when she took in his expression of obvious confusion. “You’re the only one I ever let catch me,” she told him, as she suddenly levered herself off his body.

By the time Eliot had propped himself up as far as his elbows, Parker was off and running around the corner, chattering away through comms to Nate about what happened next. His breath coming back to him, the hitter got to his feet then and dusted off his backside. The moment was over, but what she had said still rung in his mind like a bell. She did always let him catch her and never once seemed to mind the closeness that entailed. It had to mean something, but right now wasn’t the time to wonder on it. All Eliot was clear on was that he would always be there to catch Parker, whenever she fell or even threw herself deliberately into his arms. Glancing up ten floors to where her harness hung uselessly on the rope and letting out a long breath, he thought to himself;

‘If I fall for her now, who the hell is gonna catch me?’


End file.
